There are many reasons why I didn’t write any political analysis at the time of this bloody war.

One reason is that I only wanted the war to be over, to stop the bloodshed, while I knew that the longer Gaza can stand in the face of the Israeli genocidal rampage, the better the chance that the aggressors will not get what they want and that the siege of Gaza, which, in the long term, is even more destructive to Human lives and development, will be lifted.

But the best excuse is that throughout this war the monstrous Israeli war machine seemed clumsy and clueless, while the Gaza resistance seemed to keep cool and know what they are doing.

I preferred to keep quiet and do my small thing by demonstrating against the aggression.

Now, that the war is over, what can we learn from it politically? I will try to do it short, going over many different aspects of this war, hoping to write in more details about some of them soon.

Who Won The Military Confrontation?

Great wars end with the winning side conquering territory or even with the loser signing his surrender.

The Israelis say they could conquer Gaza, but they didn’t do it. In fact, they already did it twice, in 1956 and in 1967. When they withdrew from Gaza in 2005 it was without agreement, after they paid a heavy price in two Palestinian intifadas. The fact that Gaza was not occupied again is the combine result of the expected resistance to the act of occupation and the memories of the resistance over 38 years of continued occupation. Any way you count it, the resistance is what keeps Gaza free of direct occupation.

Without gaining land or surrender, isn’t war all about killing people and destructing their livelihood? The Israeli officers, politicians and experts run to the judge of history crying: “We killed more than 2,000 people; we destroyed the homes of almost half a million Gazans, what they did to us is nothing to compare. You must declare us winners!”

But this is not the way the war is decided. We live in the world of expectations. Everybody knew that Israel has the military firepower to destroy Gaza. If the war is not for total annihilation of the other side, then it is fought to prove something about the relationship of forces.

Like Lebanon’s Hezbollah in summer 2006, the Palestinian resistance in summer 2014, led by the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, surprised Israel both with their technical preparations and with their fighting power.

Missiles and mortars – The previous Israeli onslaught on Gaza, just in November 2012, ended with a few rockets that reached the Tel-Aviv metropolitan area, where most of the Israelis live. Now, for the first time, Tel Aviv was systematically targeted, putting in doubt the Israeli assumption that it can wage its wars on other people’s lands without being targeted. From the first days of the confrontation, as they had no effective way to stop the rockets flying, the Israeli military commanders claimed that the resistance is running out of ammunition. By the end of the first week they declared that a third of the missiles were already used. After 51 days of war the only possible conclusion is that they didn’t have any idea how many rockets there were. The only bright side for the Israelis was the development of the anti-rocket systems, which limited the practical damage they suffered. It is still an open question how much of this is real technological success and how much is the weakness of the new Palestinian rockets. Yet, you should remember that many of the people in Gaza that were launching these rockets spent their summers as kids throwing stones at Israeli soldiers. They have many reasons to feel that they are making progress.

The Tunnels – In this war the Palestinian resistance gave a new dimension to the old notion of Underground movement. It compensated for the overwhelming Israeli firepower and Israel’s full control of the air and the sea with this simple, old technological solution. The tunnels that went under the fence and behind Israeli lines where only a small addition. The Israeli fixation with “destroying the tunnels” (whether real or simulated) enabled the resistance to kill many more soldiers inside Gaza than those killed by attacks through the tunnels.

Endurance – Israel was not prepared for a long confrontation. In the end it was the longest war of its kind. Typically the Israeli political thinking was that they should buy as much as possible political time in order to let the army do its thing (They call it “Let the IDF win” – even though they don’t even remember when they last won, nor have any idea what such a win should be…) On the other side the Hamas leadership made an up-hill job during the long days of fighting and negotiations to improve the functioning of the new Palestinian unity and heal some of the breaches in the Arab solidarity. In the end news of rockets in Tel Aviv fell on the Western news somewhere between car bombs in Baghdad and an earthquake in Iceland – not a ranking that the Zionist state, as the spoiled child of the world’s top powers, can let themselves be in.

For all these reasons, this military confrontation created some shift in the completely imbalanced balance of power in favor of the Palestinians.

The Politics of the War

The military confrontation is just the tip of the iceberg of a much wider confrontation between political entities, societies and economies. Each side in our days is deeply dependant on a supportive “camp” of states, people and cultures.

Israel started this war at what seemed like an optimal combination of political circumstances. The suffering of the Palestinian people tends be shadowed by the bloody mayhem in Syria, Iraq, Libya and other Arab countries. The Western powers have lost any purpose or semblance of direction in handling the conflict in Palestine and their attitude is defined by their prejudice against Palestinians as “terrorists” and by the mantra about “Israel’s right to defend itself”, no matter what any of the two sides is doing.

The Palestinian resistance entered this war in the worst regional conditions. It has never been more isolated. The Egyptian state is now controlled by a boiling counter-revolution that regards Hamas as an extension of its main enemy, the Muslim Brothers. The traditional supporters of the resistance in Iran and Syria are busy putting down the insurrection by the Syrian people and didn’t forget Hamas’ taking sides with the revolt against Bashar. So the resistance in Gaza was left with only Qatar and Turkey as active political backers for its aspiration to break the siege.

In these conditions, developments throughout the war didn’t bring any massive breakthrough but did help gradually to tilt the edge toward the resistance’s side.

In the beginning of the war Israel was exited by its own unity around the sacred cause. This wall to wall unity is typical to the settlers’ community in Israel at the beginning of any war and is held together by complete disregard to the Palestinians as Human beings and by the long practiced rituals of self-victimization. But recent developments in the Israeli society meant that racist extremism, the logical conclusion of the settler mentality, took control of politics, the street and the media. Before the end of the war most of the ruling coalition and half of the war cabinet turned to “talkback attacks” on the government and the military leadership for failing to satisfy their militarist dreams. The atmosphere of internal terror against any opposition to the war helped to silence political opponents but didn’t make the “internal front” much stronger.

On the other side the Palestinians entered this war with a newly established “unity government” that started its period by the PA President Abbas declaring that security cooperation with the occupation is “sacred” and failing to transfer wages to tens of thousands of government employees in Gaza. The Israelis hoped to use Abbas to add pressure on the Hamas-led resistance in Gaza.

As the attack on Gaza enraged Palestinians elsewhere, there was a massive popular mobilization – most significantly in Al-Quds, where there was a local Intifada after the burning to death of Muhammad Abu Khdeir. In the 1948-occupied territories Palestinian youth held the widest confrontations with the police since October 2000, in which more than a thousand were detained. In the West Bank there were several mass demonstrations and several demonstrators were shot dead by the Israeli army.

In the end it was the Palestinians that played the unity card, succeeded to form a united list of Palestinian demands and a united negotiating team. Israeli and Egyptian “achievements” like letting Abbas’ men control the border crossings are no more than face saving for them to cover their agreement to relieve the siege. What extra “security” for them will the Palestinian guards give as anything that goes through the crossings is already scrutinized by the Israelis or the Egyptians?

On the Arab level Hamas made the best in the worst conditions. For some time the Palestinian cause was again at the center of attention. There were demonstrations in many places, massive ones in Jordan, some even in Haleb (Allepo) in spite of continuous bombing by the regime. In these conditions every Arab government felt obliged to pay some lips’ service to show support for the Palestinians. Even the Egyptian government had to temper down its instinctive hostility.

Throughout the world there was a wave of activity and support for the Palestinian cause. Naturally “Stop the War” was accompanied by “Lift the Siege”, “BDS” and “Free Palestine”. The Latin American left, which took control of most of the state in South America over the last decade, gave important moral support, led by Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first Indian and Socialist president, who endorsed BDS and declared Israel a terrorist state.

Public opinion in the Arab World and the West also forced some rethinking in the ruling imperialist circles. It mostly came in two waves: First the temporary suspension of air travel to Tel Aviv, later re-examination of some weapons’ supply by the US, Britain and Spain. This doesn’t mean that the Western powers overcame their racist instinct – we have seen, for example, the European initiative toward the end of the war to re-condition the lifting of the siege of Gaza on its demilitarization – just as the Israelis themselves all but dropped this condition. But Israel is not as high as it used to be in the imperialist agenda – it is just another source of problems. Its imperialist masters have almost forgotten when was the last time that it served their interests in any effective way.

What Next?

The future of Gaza is still uncertain. Even when you reach agreement with Israel (or with Egypt) there is no guarantee that it will be honored, as happened with the agreements after the previous (2012) war and with the 2011 prisoners’ exchange. Yet Gaza is fighting for liberty…

It required one intifada to bring in the PLO and another intifada to throw away the Israeli army and settlers. The Israeli withdrawal in 2005 enabled the relatively free 2006 elections and the establishment of the Hamas government. By 2007 Hamas succeeded to implement the elections result and take full control after aborting an attempted coup by a US trained militia led by Dahlan.

Gaza became the first (and till now only) part of Palestine under Palestinian control. Since then Israel makes everything it can to make this experience at Palestinian independence painful. In the last years its official policy is “differentiation” – to prove that lives under the occupation and Abbas in the West Bank is better than independence (and siege) under Hamas. Being loath to give anything to the Palestinians and driven by uncontrollable desire for settlements and land grab, it concentrated its effort on making life in Gaza a hell.

Gaza became stronger in spite of the siege and consecutive attacks. In the last war, for the first time, Gaza fought like a state, mostly by organized armed forces under central command. In the middle of the war Hamas’ leader, Khaled Mashaal, boasted that the resistance is killing soldiers while the Israelis are killing civilians. By the end of the war most Palestinian leaders agreed that the guarantee for their achievements is not any agreement but the power of the resistance.

But the struggle is not about Gaza – it is about the future of Palestine. And Palestine could not be freed while much of the rest of the Arab world is deteriorating into a bloody civil war. The heroic standing of the Palestinian during the latest assault on Gaza was an important reminder to the Arab people everywhere that the fight for freedom requires unity in the face of the oppressors and that it can be won even at the harshest conditions.

Like this:

(This call for a demonstration in Haifa was published on Facebook on behalf of several Palestinian activists from the Patriotic Youth… The demonstration had to take place on Sunday, August 25, 2013. More than 120 activists expressed their desire to participate. The invitation was later deleted for reasons that were not yet specified…)

From politics to ethics

The crimes committed against our peoples in Syria and Egypt, and the justifications of these crimes by different official bodies, were they Arab or foreign, are an additional confirmation that we are beyond the stage of political debate. There is no place for political positions or activity unless it is within the framework of the principled defense of morality. This morality is represented by the basic Human Rights of the Arab citizen wherever he is, the right of the Arab person to live in dignity and to exercise his fundamental rights to demonstrate, hold sit-in or resist any official decision through peaceful means, which are legitimate morally and according to international conventions.

The military’s intervention in politics

The image reflected from our Arab region shows that the military is the master of the scene in Syria and Egypt. The army comes to politics under the pretext of security and then kills the citizen in the name of ideology. It only attempts to silence and kill innocent people so that all justifications for murder will be present, whatever the size of the crime and whatever the means. This way the clearing of a peaceful sit-in or spraying children with chemical weapons become a maneuver aimed first and foremost to eliminate the sacred status of the human being, whose dignity and rights constitute the first origin of real national security and real democratic transformation.

The sanctity of the holy sites

We also call upon all those who are interested in the unity of our societies for a better future, to stand firmly against any attempt at burning or desecration of any of the holy sites. Do not enter the language of fitna (sectarian division) to peoples’ minds, whether fuelling it with the pretext of refusing it, or strengthening it in order to gain advantage.

Finally, because the progress of our societies requires a moral compass, which is the first and last origin for any position about any political event, and because silence is the neutrality that complements the crime, we invite you to participate in the demonstration and to light candles…

Just as the thunder is duly followed by lightning, the massacre in Cairo this morning (Saturday, July 27) is the expected and natural result of the military coup that ousted the first democratically elected Egyptian president, Mohammad Morsi, on July 3.

The politicians that called upon the army to topple the government can’t say that they didn’t expect it, that they are not responsible.

It is not the people’s army that took control of Egypt, but the same rotten “DeepState” establishment that stood at the center of the corrupt dictatorship for decades. It is led by General A-Sisi that was involved in Human Rights violations against demonstrators at the first period after Mubarak’s fall. The new president is the same Mubarak era judge, Adly Mansour, which overturned the law that prevented senior leaders of the old regime from participating in the elections.

The bullets were directed at the heads and chests of the demonstrators, as the BBC correspondent, between others, reported from the scene of the massacre near Rabaa al-Adawia mosque. Those bullets were not directed only at the supporters of president Morsi, but at the heart of the Egyptian people. They were shot at the service of the same corrupt and impotent class that enslaved and robbed the Egyptian people for thousands of years. They came to stop the revolution from freeing the Egyptian people and to ensure the continuation of the rulers’ class privilege.

Western Complicity

The green light for the massacre was given by the Egyptian officers’ real bosses – their mentors in the US administration. The clearest signal was the refusal of Mr. Obama to call the coup a coup. They didn’t call for the immediate restoration of democracy but immediately continued their working relationship with the generals and their puppets as the legitimate government of Egypt. They didn’t even ask about the whereabouts of president Morsi that was kidnapped and held incommunicado in an unknown location.

Reading the BBC news about this morning’s events, I failed to find any mention of the word Massacre. Their correspondents on the ground reported about “pools of blood”, “bullet wounds… especially in the head” and shooting of automatic rounds. But the carefully worded item summarized it all as “clashes between the army and protesters”.

All told, A-Sisi is “Our man in Cairo”… Like Chile’s Pinochet, Argentina’s Videla, Indonesia’s Suharto, Congo’s Mobuto and most war criminals over the last century. It is no wonder that Wall Street Journal, a highly respected mouthpiece of Big Capital, called openly in an editorial on July 4 for A-Sisi to be Egypt’s Pinochet.

The Palestinian Litmus Test

For all those that might have lost their heads from the propaganda against the Muslim Brothers and the appearance of millions anti-Morsi demonstrators on the streets on June 30, the generals didn’t leave a minute for doubt where do they head.

Their very first step as they arrested the Egyptian president was to impose full siege of the Palestinian Gaza strip.

Since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, the Mubarak regime took an active part in guarding Israel’s siege of the strip – the first chunk of Palestinian land to gain independence from the colonialist occupation. After Hamas, the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brothers, won the first semi-democratic Palestinian elections on January 2006, Israel, with Egyptian cooperation, tightened the siege to the verge of starving the population.

Over the last two years the Egyptian revolution brought relief and relative prosperity to Gaza’s embattled people. But during the last month the Egyptian army is waging a crazy campaign to destroy the tunnels that became Gaza’s life-lines and tighten the siege again.

Poetry

While politicians, like bloggers, pour a stream of words, long sentences that twist and complicate reality, Generals are like poets. With short words, which reveal emotion more than calculated sophistication, they scratch open the wounds in one’s sleeping soul.

So revealing was the declaration that President Morsi is now no more kidnapped but legally detained for interrogation on two criminal charges: Conspiring with Hamas and fleeing from Mubarak’s prison.

The first charge is a medal of honor for any Arab nationalist and for every freedom lover around the world – as Hamas is only defined as a “terrorist organization” for its resistance to Israel’s occupation.

The second charge can clearly be directed at any of the millions of Egyptians who broke the laws of the dictatorship and fought their way to freedom.

Defending Democracy

By resisting the military coup, the people that demonstrate today in Cairo and all over Egypt, putting their lives in danger, braving with their bare chests the army’s snipers, are now the first line of defense for the Arab Spring – the hope of 350 million Arabs (and many more people around the world) to leave in true democracy.

After the people awakened, after they felt the power of the mass movement and experienced the ability of the revolution to topple regimes, no new dictator will sit safely on his bayonets.

But first we should pay respects to the martyrs. It is the time for mourning, for Human Solidarity and for reflection on morality and truthfulness.

“Marcos, the quintessential anti-leader, insists that his black mask is a mirror, so that ‘Marcos is gay in San Francisco, black in South Africa, an Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Ysidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, a Mayan Indian in the streets of San Cristobal, a Jew in Germany, a Gypsy in Poland, a Mohawk in Quebec, a pacifist in Bosnia, a single woman on the Metro at 10 p.m., a peasant without land, a gang member in the slums, an unemployed worker, an unhappy student and, of course, a Zapatista in the mountains’. In other words, he is simply us: we are the leader we’ve been looking for.”

In the last days of June, we spent some days in Paris, hearing about the Syrian Revolution from newly exiled Syrian activists. One goal was to bring a closer picture of the revolution in Free Haifa. Since then the Egyptian Coup interrupted, causing some unexpected setback (to the Arab Spring, not only to my writing schedule). Now I return to the original plan with the first post… So how did the Syrian Revolution begin?

The Reign of Terror

To understand the revolution you should start with the regime that preceded it. We didn’t have much time to talk about it, neither much will. One simple fact that stunned Iris was that most of the young activists that we spoke with didn’t take part in any political activity before the revolution – it was not even considered an option.

People that were active speak about a nation with 17 different security services, every one of them spying on everyone else and can arrest you at will. They speak about a nation of 22 million people where about one million of them are police informants, of children induced to report about their parents. They speak about parents that, when their children are arrested, will not dare even to go to ask about their whereabouts.

We heard about leaders of the communist party that were held in prison without trial for more than 14 years, only to be sentenced later to 15 years imprisonment. The charge was specially selected to insult: opposition to socialism – as if to show that the Ba’ath regime was socialist while the communists where anti-socialist.

The memory of the Hama Massacre of February 1982 remains an open wound in the consciousness of the people. It seems the regime was cynically building its reputation of ruthlessness, showing the people its readiness to perform unlimited indiscriminate atrocities, in order to keep the traditionally proud and politicized Syrian people at bay.

It is impossible to speak about the Assads’ regime without mentioning their cynical exploitation of Syria’s sectarian divide. The Alawites were traditionally poor and oppressed. But the Assads didn’t really want them to develop and integrate – but cynically used them as a tool for oppression. They would not allow economic development or good education in Alawite villages – so that the only root out of poverty for poor Alawite youth will be to join the army or the different security services and become a tool of terror against the masses in the mostly Sunni cities.

All this can be summarized by the eternal words of Ghawar, the popular hero of the satirist Duraid Lahham. Asked about the state of his homeland, Ghawar says all is well; it is missing nothing except of a bit of “Karameh” (dignity).

Socio-Economic Change

The legitimacy of the regime was farther eroded by “economic reform”. If in the past major parts of the economy were held by the state sector, and were supposed to serve the whole society, reform gave a free hand to the private sector. This privatization under the shadow of an absolute dictatorship, managed as a family business, caused crony Capitalism to be the rule. Now, as the whole system was openly directed toward the enrichment of a small circle of “insiders”, resentment of chronic poverty, anger at eroding social rights and striving for dignity, freedom and democracy all became one.

We were told about the case of some engineering student. As one remnant of the socialist system, the state was obliged to hire all engineering graduates. Then, as part of the “reform”, this obligation also evaporated. Some engineering students wanted to write a petition asking not to abolish this social right. Even before they really wrote the petition their plot was exposed and the leaders of the ring were sentenced to several years in prison.

Under the burden of the cannibalism of the security services, taking their share of any legitimate business, eroding social rights and incompetence of uncontrolled bureaucracy, the economy was stumbling. Bright new products from modernizing Turkey just over the border were everywhere while local manufacturing was closing. People were yearning for change but didn’t believe it could happen in Syria.

The Call for the Revolution

There is no doubt that the Syrian revolution was a direct result of the revolutionary fever that caught the stagnating Arab World in the beginning of 2011. But it wasn’t immediate.

The regime itself, thinking politics, initially regarded the Arab Spring as an insurrection of the masses against the old reactionary stooges of Western Imperialism. They were socially isolated, had no public legitimacy, were exposed and detested for their servitude to foreign interests. How could you compare those with the Syrian “progressive”, “resistance” regime, with a coalition of patriotic parties and mass organizations to mobilize support and patriotic credibility won by its backing to Hezbollah in its resistance to Israeli occupation of Lebanon and its refusal to sign capitulation treaties with Israel?

Most Syrian people, as far as we could understand, didn’t give much thought to what seemed to them as hollow propaganda in the service of people that were enriching themselves at their expense and stamping on their dignity. But they still didn’t want to start the revolution – they simply knew what kind of regime they have and expected any mass uprising to be drawn in rivers of blood.

But still, out of the virtual world, came the call for “revolution” on March 15, 2011. Like previous calls since the beginning of 2011, participation was limited and the protesters were outnumbered by security personnel and vigilant pro-regime gangs.

The Daraa Incident

Daraa is a typical poor Syrian province, stretching south of Damascus and down to the Jordanian border. It is characterized by its conservative society, where tribal ties still play an important role. Its economy was also retarded, highly dependent on the government. It was badly affected by the reform, the contraction of the state sector and erosion of social rights.

When some children in Daraa wrote on their school’s walls the slogan of the Arab Spring: “A-Sha’ab Yurid Iskat A-Nezam” (The people want to topple the regime) – the regime didn’t take it as a joke. There were investigations and some 15 kids, aged 9 to 15, were arrested.

The families of the arrested kids were very worried. They organized a delegation to speak with the security chief. What he told them is the only part of the history of the Syrian revolution that everybody agrees upon. “Forget about your children. You will never see them again. If you want children, you can give birth to new children. If you don’t know how to do it, bring in your wives and we will show you how!”

The words were calculated to humiliate, to sustain the myth that you shouldn’t ask about your children when they are arrested. They touched on the very sense of “Karameh” (dignity) that is at the center of being human.

The security chief in Daraa at the time was a man called “’Atef Najib”, a cousin of President Bashar. Belonging to the close circle of Assad loyalists his powers were unlimited. Some of our interviewees are still convinced that if the regime would have disciplined him after the incident the revolution could still be avoided. But they say that Bashar was more concerned not to hurt the Mafia solidarity and sense of impunity of his ruling circle than he was afraid to raise the furor of the people.

The poor people of Daraa came out in their masses to save their children and their dignity. For the first time the solidarity of the old traditional society proved stronger than the atomization of society by fear and corruption. Confronted by mass demonstrations the regime responded with live ammunition. They were martyrs, mass funerals and more mass demonstrations. The masses in other cities came out in solidarity with the people of Daraa. By the end of March the Syrian Revolution was under way in full steam.

What can be learnt from this beginning?

Hearing the real stories how thing unfolded gives you a very different perspective of what the revolution is about, its strengths and its weaknesses.

It is basically revolution of the Syrian society, pulling the thrones of tyranny from its suffering body. It is a revolution that starts with the defense of human dignity and its main aim is to put an end to humiliation.

This explains why the revolution is strongest in the countryside (the “reaf”), where it is easier to unite society against the intrusive state apparatus. It also explains the weakness of the political opposition, which is mainly based in the big cities and whose main support is the educated elite.

After the walls of terror and fear were broken, there is no way that the Syrian people will give up and put their fate again tin the hands of their torturers.

The Military Coup that ended the rule of Mohammad Morsi, the first freely elected Egyptian President, is a most dangerous curve in the plot of the Arab Spring. Till now things were pretty clear. There were the forces of the old regime, resisting any democratic change in order to defend their privilege. On the other side there was a mass uprising with political forces of all colors calling for democracy.

Now, for the first time, the masses were split and many of the forces that participated in the revolutionary overthrow of the Mubarak dictatorship teamed with the forces of the old regime to dissolve all the democratic institutions, the fruits of the revolution.

This obliges us to ask some very hard questions: What is the revolution? What are its goals? Can it still succeed? What is the way forward now? Trying to give answers as major events still unfold is not easy, but as many essential truths are masked by the smoke of war we can from some distance at least resume some of the lost honor of truth and reality, if not full revolutionary perspective.

A Coup is a Coup

It is always good, even at the time of major setbacks, to notice and celebrate small victories. For me that fact that our enemy lies to himself is a victory, because living in a faked reality is the choice of the weak. So when the United States refused to call the Coup a Coup it proved again how hollow is its claim to sponsor democracy and freedom. But the sting came with the position of the African Union – which denounced the Coup and automatically suspended Egypt. It is part of the new world order, where the old imperialist powers prove to be what they are – the enemies of the people – while the emerging states of the third world are taking democracy more seriously.

The Coup and the Revolution

A coup and a revolution are not mutually exclusive “ideas” or types of activity. Actually in the first surge of the Egyptian revolution, in the beginning of 2011, after mass demonstrations have shaken the dictatorship, it was the heads of the army that staged a court-coup to dispose Mubarak in order to save as much as possible of the old regime.

In 2011 the coup was staged to dislodge a regime that was basically a military dictatorship. It was a clear step toward democracy and it was welcomed by everybody. Now the coup is designed to topple an elected president, after the dissolution of the first freely elected parliament and it suspended the democratically adopted constitution.

But, in a sign that Egypt has gone a long way with the revolution, the army, while taking power by force, swears its loyalty to the revolution and the Egyptian people. Unlike 2011, the army avoids taking direct power in its own hands but appoints a top judge, Adly Mansour, as civilian president – noting that the old regime’s judges were best at keeping their positions after the revolution and played a leading role in undermining the new democracy.

Actually the coup in Egypt was not possible without the cooperation and support of big part of the revolutionary forces. This blog made a point of characterizing the revolution not by a political or social agenda but as the active intervention of the masses to change the political order. Many Egyptian people celebrated the coup when it was announced, and many generally democratic and progressive people were rejoiced in the Arab world and beyond. But take care: In the politics of the coup, the alliance between the revolutionary forces and the remnants of the old order is not even an equal partnership. The masses were mobilized to legitimize the move but all the keys of control were given to the representatives of the old order – and it is not an issue of political beliefs but the vested interests of the classes that were (and still are) plundering Egypt and keeping it and its people in poverty, servitude and backwardness for decades.

The Egyptian Political Divide

It is very hard to count people in demonstrations. All estimations from the organizers, the media and the police are always politically biased. It is much easier to count votes – but revolution is a very fluid state with people’s opinions and affiliations changing fast.

An additional reason for the volatility of the Egyptian public scene is the political vacuum that was left by a long period of tyranny – when only very small elite had any experience of political struggle. Religious movements had the advantage of keeping the connection with the masses through activity in the mosques but no real experience in governance or coalition building.

In the first election after the revolution – the Parliamentary elections that took place between November 28, 2011 and January 11, 2012 – the Muslim Brothers came out as the biggest party with 37.5% of the votes. With the (even more Islamic) Nour party’s 27.8% they formed a clear majority in the elected assembly. The forces of the old regime were prevented from taking part.

When the second elections took place – this time for the presidency – in May and June 2012, the political picture already seemed much different. In the first round the Brotherhood came first with 25% of the vote. The clear representative of the old regime, Ahmed Shafik, that was now allowed in by Adly Mansour’s court, came a close second with almost 24%. Third place went to the mild leftist Hamadeen Sabahi with 21%. The next Islamic candidate came after him with 17%.

As a result the second round of the elections was a run-off between the Muslim Brothers’ Morsi and Shafik. Taking into account that all the other candidates were aligned with the revolution, you could expect Morsi to take over 70% of the vote. In the final count it was 51.73% for Morsi against 48.27% for Shafik.

Assuming that almost all the other Islamic vote went to Morsi, it means that the majority of secular pro-revolution voters preferred the clear representative of the old order over a Muslim Brother. And this was in 2012 before any of the true and alleged list of Morsi’s mistakes.

The Problem with the Brothers

At the beginning of the European Spring in 1848, Marx and Engels started “The Communist Manifesto” with the words: “A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism”. To much the same effect, the Arab World, still in the beginning of its spring, is haunted by the spectre of Islamism. Marx and Engels conclusion was that “It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a manifesto of the party itself.” The Muslim Brothers, shaped by decades of persecution, would generally prefer to talk less and do more.

When the Russian Revolution in 1917 started as a mass democratic and social protest movement and toppled the Tsar in February, the Bolsheviks were not the biggest party but they were the best organized and had a clear idea what they want to achieve. Lenin knew he had a short window of opportunity to take control before a new bourgeois political class will establish its rule. In the Bolshevik revolution of November 1917 he was fast to pass into law the “black distribution” – giving the poor peasants in every location the legitimacy of the revolution to independently take control of their land. Later the peasants fought to defend their land by saving the revolution.

The Brothers are the main organized party of the Arab revolution – but they are revolutionaries of a very different kind. If we judge by what they did when they had the chance to rule, they are trying not to rock the boat. They try to give assurances to imperialism. They think they can improve the economic situation simply by more honest, independent and professional management (which sounds likely, taking into account the wild corruption of the old regime). They try to neutralize the influence of the apparatus of the old regime by compromise and by democratic legitimacy.

This “we the good guys” approach to the democratic revolution faces several major obstacles, where every point of their strength becomes also a cause of vulnerability:

Their image as the inevitable winners of the Arab Spring tends to unite all other parties against them, or at least to limit their influence, even before they reach real power.

Their disciplined organization is feared by foes and allies alike.

Their reliance on religious ideology alienates people of other religions, adherents of other tendencies of Islam and an influential liberal middle class – leaving them to fight for an a priori limited support base and making coalition building harder.

Their remedy of gradual reform requires a long time and stable conditions to materialize. It proved a success in Turkey where a similar party took control in democratic elections in a relatively stable country. They seemed helpless and hapless in Egypt where they took control in the middle of political and economic crisis and where all other parties were unwilling to give them an opportunity to prove themselves.

Their readiness to play by the rules of formal democracy is not a good substitute to the more essential basic work of confidence building, networking, bringing together allies and solving problems with rivals.

In the end, the problem with the brothers is not that they don’t stand in my or your standards, but when they don’t stand by their own standards. The Brothers will usually avoid a fight if it is not likely to be an assured win.

In Egypt 2011 they declared that they wouldn’t put a candidate for the presidency – probably because they were aware that winning elections was much easier than governing and that they don’t have the material conditions for implementing their program in government.

Even at the last moment before this week’s military coup, according to the testimony of Yasser Al-Za’atra in Al-Jazeera, the Brothers’ leadership was aware to the preparations for military coup and preferred that Morsi will agree to a referendum about early elections, which will stay within the limits of the democratic game. In the end internal differences prevented this last moment attempt to avoid a clash.

The Revolution must continue!

The limits of the political leaderships are clear… The biggest responsibility rests with the Leftist and Liberal leaderships that play to the hands of the old regime. Now the Brothers justly feel cheated of legitimately won power and their first response is to show that they can’t easily be shoved off.

Still the revolution is much bigger and more important than any political leadership. It is the movement of the Egyptian people to control their own lives and to assure their dignity and social rights. In my view, with the lack of a Leninist leadership that can unite the masses around a clear goal, there is no alternative to the patient building of dialog and understanding between all the sections of society that are interested in a democratic future for Egypt.

Long before the Great Syrian Revolution started on March 15, 2011, I hold a special admiration to the Syrian people. Much of it stemmed from close friendship with Syrian activists in the occupied Golan Heights, since their half-year general strike in 1982. In a more general perspective, Syria used to be the beating heart of the Arab national movement. In March 1920, when the “Syrian Congress” declared the first independent Arab state in modern history, “The Arab Kingdom of Syria”, representatives from Palestine took part under the name of “Southern Syria”.

Separated by the Zionist occupation of Palestine since 1948, we couldn’t have any direct connections with our sisters and brothers in Syria. But the Syrian patriotic culture, from Duraid Lahham’s satirical movies and Samieh Shkeir’s lyrics to “Bab Al-Harra” (the Neighborhood’s Gate) TV series, were everybody’s bread and butter. The commercial center of Hallisa neighborhood, where I live in Haifa, was named Bab Al-Harra in honor of the series.

At the beginning of 2012 we organized “Palestinians for the Syrian Revolution” which raised a progressive secular voice in support of the revolution. By the end of that year, Herak Haifa (Arabic) took part, with many other groups, in collecting material support to relieve the suffering of Syrian refugees in Jordan. It is symptomatic that even this wholly humanitarian effort aroused rouge responses from some local Shabiha (Arabic), as the supporters of the Assad regimes are named here after the Syrian thugs with the same name. On May 31, in the global day of solidarity with the Syrian revolution, Palestinian Youth held demonstrations in Bab Al-Amud (Damascus Gate) in Jerusalem, in Ramallah and Al-Khalil.

Yet as the revolution was transformed from an enthusiastic peaceful mass uprising to a prolonged civil war, there is a constant strain on the public support for the revolution. Any excess on the side of the revolution, and any compromise from its leadership, is looked upon with grave concern. Is toppling the regime worth all these efforts and sacrifices? How do we know that what will come after it will be any better? Unlike the Syrian people that have no choice but to fight on or put their lives in the hands of their torturers, we can simply stop watching the news and ignore the bloodshed.

Going to Paris

Any dictatorship creates communities of political refugees spread around the world. Any new wave of conflict and oppression throws away a new wave of refugees. Going to Paris is a special opportunity to hear the news from Syria from people that were there and took part in the struggle until the recent period. On June 27-29 I spent 3 days in Paris, hearing the story of the Syrian Revolution.

Paris is a very good place to talk about the revolution. It is a city that, till this day, celebrates its bloody revolution of 1789 – 1799. This revolution is remembered by Humanity as the turning point from Backwardness and the rule of hereditary monarchs and oligarchs to Enlightenment, Modernism, Republicanism and Democracy.

Being in Paris was also a good opportunity for quick review of French history. We were reminded that the revolution, after a prolonged bloody struggle, produced first (1804) the “republican” Emperor Napoleon and then military defeat and the return of reactionary kings (1814). Only after 81 years and three more popular revolutions (1830, 1848 and 1870) has the third French Republic really established itself. Still we all feel obliged to the tradition of the French Revolution.

This puts in perspective the great Arab Revolution – the Arab Spring – which is the spearhead of a new renaissance of Humanity that now spreads all over the globe. As this revolution develops without an agreed plan and with no clear leadership, it makes it all the more important that we discuss and learn and build our network of activists.

One question that I asked my Syrian friends was: “What is the best source to read news and analysis about the Syrian revolution?” They didn’t think that there is a good answer to this question.

In the next few days I will write some posts to summarize what I heard in Paris. It is not a systematic research, nor a wide range of views, neither a deep analysis. But it is a humble attempt to draw a live picture through the impressions of honest young (and old) people that risked their lives and freedom for the liberty of their people and their country.

If you have any suggestion about good sources to learn more about the Syrian Revolution – please leave the links in a comment to this post.

(The photo above was taken at the Paris demonstration in support of the Syrian Revolution on Saturday 29/6/2013. On the right you see the Kurdish flag raised alongside the flags of the Syrian Revolution. Beyond them on the tree to the left there is a Palestinian flag…)

It is a long time that we, secular supporters of the Syrian Revolution in Palestine, feel that we have to raise our voice in the street. It is not easy. First of all, we are always busy with the daily struggle to defend Palestinian rights again Israeli Apartheid. Actually the “Palestinians for the Syrian Revolution” group that was formed in Haifa at the beginning of 2011 was all but dissolved as the activists were preoccupied with organizing support of Palestinian prisoners on hunger strikes.

The supporters of the Assad regime don’t suffer from this problem. They made a habit of coming to all sorts of Palestinian Patriotic Demonstrations with the regime’s flag and pictures of the Syrian tyrant – and make a show in the middle of the demonstration at the expense of national unity. In the day of the land, 30/3/2013, in the central demonstration with many thousands in Sakhnin, about a dozen of “Shabiha”, after making their show to the cameras, attacked the crew of Al Jazeera and cause a mass brawl as people from the public jumped to oppose them. In the March of Return, in 16/4/2013, the Islamic movement preferred not to join the march in order to avoid a quarrel. The supporters of the revolution, on the other side, like the real mothers in King Solomon’s judgment, will not split the Palestinian patriotic struggle to make their point.

After the call for the demonstration was published on Facebook, many of the supporters of the demonstration received direct and blatant threats. Shabiha supporters were not ashamed to say they will come and attack the demonstration just in front of the occupation army that is heavily present at occupied AlQuds. For us it was a problem again. Palestinian leftists and democratic activist are used to confront the army and the police, ready to be beaten or arrested, but not used to the idea of being attacked by members of their own public.

Only the hard core of the revolution’s secular supporters finally arrived in Bab Al’Amud today at 18:00 – some fifty youth, about half of them women, from AlQuds, Yaffa, Haifa and many other places all over Palestine and some Syrians from the occupied Golan heights.

We raised the Palestinian flags along the Flags of the Syrian revolution and chanted the known, beloved slogans of the heroic freedom loving Syrian people. When someone tried to raise “against us” the Syrian regime’s flag, one of the demonstrators told him: “Let me raise it, it is the flag of Syria and we all honor it” – and she carried it all along the demonstration between the flags of the revolution, shouting for the toppling of the bloody dictatorship.

It seems there was no organized attempt to bring in the Shabiha, but some people in the crowd that gathered tried to attack the demonstration. They were swiftly outnumbered by other people from the public, held and removed from the scene. Nobody in the demonstration was attacked or even had to intervene against the disruption. It was the best feeling after this tense week – to see that a random public in a busy Palestinian market street would defend us and effectively dismantle any provocation.

Some people that just happened to pass in the street, some women, some religious types, some youth, all joined the vigil, carried the banners and joined the chanting.

The Palestinian people suffered so much from oppression, carry such a long experience in struggle and the heavy price that you have to pay for your freedom, that they are they people best poised to understand the Syrian people and live with them the hope and the pain of the revolution.

Before we went home we were plotting the next demonstration, on Sunday 2/6, in front of the Jordanian embassy in Tel Aviv – in solidarity with the Jordanian prisoners in Israeli jails who are on hunger strike against their harsh treatment.

This invitation for the planned Palestinian demonstration, as part of the 31/5/2013 international day for solidarity with the Syrian Revolution, was published in the event’s page on Facebook. Considering the importance of the issue, I published it in Arabic and publish here a translation to English.

Global Campaign for Solidarity with the Syrian Revolution

26 months have passed on the Syrian people’s revolution against the Assad regime and his gang. It came as an extension of the revolutions of freedom, dignity and social justice witnessed by the Arab world in the last two and a half years. The Syrian Revolution was launched as a civilian movement with demonstrations, meetings, dancing and singing circles, strikes and other different forms of peaceful expression. It succeeded to remain peaceful for months despite the criminality of the regime that did not hesitate to use the most powerful methods of repression and terror, from live ammunition to warplanes, including Scud missiles and cluster bombs, as well as looting, rape, arbitrary arrests and torture – which forced the Syrians revolutionaries to turn toward armed resistance. In spite of this, peaceful demonstrations still come out and the liberated areas are still teeming with activities and projects promoting the values ​​and goals of the revolution.

We are Palestinians men and women, brought together by our love for Syria, country and people, and our support for its revolution and its principles. We announce our convergence with this revolution. We salute the Syrian people for their heroic steadfastness and resistance to tyranny, until they will realize the objectives of their revolution with the downfall of the regime of Assad and his gang, and the transition to a regime under which they will enjoy freedom, social justice and independence of the national decision.

We firmly reject all forms of foreign intervention in Syria: Whether by the Arab regimes that didn’t fall in the revolutions, especially the Gulf states, which sought to derail the Syrians revolution, make it fail and control it; Or Iran and Russia, which promote their geopolitical interests in the region at the expense of the blood of the people and their rights; And the NATO countries, chattering a lot about support for the Syrian people, while standing by watching the collapse of the Syrian country and state, to ensure their interests and the interest of Israel.

We strongly condemn the practices of groups alien to the Syrian revolution, we don’t have to add on what the Syrian revolutionary public opinion says, in their condemnation. The revolutionaries, who chanted against Assad, are those who condemn any violations from the side of the opposition forces, political, military and civilian. We also support the Syrian people’s resistance, in the means that they find appropriate, whether peaceful or non-peaceful.

Palestine, which struggles during the last sixty-five years for liberation from the brutal occupation, can only be on the side of the revolution of its big sister, which came out to refuse dictatorship and fascism. The freedom of the Palestinian people from the occupation and their historic right to their land, homeland and the return of their refugees, and freedom of the Syrian people from tyranny and their right to justice, are two connected lines that can’t be separated. The prisons of the Assad regime are filled with detainees standing fast, who are not less heroic and patient than our prisoners in the prisons of the Zionist occupation.

If the fate of the Syrian people was that their country became center for the rivalry of sectarian sensitivities, regional accounts and international interests, this doesn’t diminish in any way the justice of their cause.

Because we believe in the revolution of the Syrian people and their choices, we announce our participation in the global campaign for its support and we will organize a demonstration on Friday, May 31, 2013 at six in the evening (18:00) in occupied Jerusalem in front of Bab Al’Amud – Damascus Gate. We call upon our freedom loving people to participate in this demonstration, raising the voice of rights and freedom.

As the Arabic saying goes, Egypt is the mother of the world (مصر أم الدنيا), or, at least, it stands at the center of the Arab World. So, when people in Egypt struggle to find the right direction for the Arab Spring, we, in Palestine, like Arab everywhere, have the feeling that this is an important struggle about our fate.

After a fast start in the beginning of 2011, the big Arab Democratic Revolution, which is what the Arab Spring is, is making slow and hardly won progress in its numerous fronts. The last confrontations in Egypt put to hard test even an addicted optimist like me.

When president Morsi was elected I wrote a special post to welcome his elections. I called on all the forces of the Egyptian revolution to work together to dismantle the old order and build a new system that will serve the Egyptian people. After Morsi’s constitutional amendments that gave his decisions immunity from the Judiciary, Egypt looked more divided than ever.

And it was a division along the wrong lines. The left and the nationalists made a common front with the remnants of the old regime. On the other side the Moslem Brothers closed ranks with the Salafists. For a moment it looked like Egypt is on the verge of war about the place of Islam in society, leaving aside the central issues of the revolution of Democracy and Social Justice.

In this war, like in any war, the truth is always one of the first victims. So I must remind that the Egypt’s Judiciary is mostly controlled by remnants of the old regime. It was subversive to the military junta that put sticks in the wheels of the revolution (and the democratic transformation). It even dissolved the first elected parliament, creating the power vacuum that converted president Morsi into the single source of democratic legitimacy.

But was not the new powers taken by Morsi converting him into a new Dictator? Egyptians have all the rights to beware any type of a new strongman. The main idea of the revolution is not to transfer power from one ruler to another, but to keep the power in the hands of the people.

The power of the people doesn’t come without internal contradictions. It can’t be expressed only by elections and representatives. The real power stays with the people only as long as they are ready to fight for it.

The Egyptian people were fighting in the streets on both sides of the last confrontation. The final result was the sum of their collective efforts. On one side Morsi’s “power grab” prevented the Judiciary from blocking the writing of the new constitution and throwing Egypt back to lack of any legitimate system. On the other side the street protests forced Morsi to give up his extra powers. The result was that all agreed to take part in the referendum about the proposed constitution.

The second and last round of vote in the referendum about Egypt’s proposed constitution will be held tomorrow, Saturday, 22.12.2012. I don’t know what will be the results of this referendum, but I can already say that the winners in the referendum are the Egyptian people.

If the majority votes to accept the proposed constitution, Egypt will have its first democratic constitution, won by revolutionary struggle and approved by democratic vote. It will establish the free Egyptian people as the source of legitimacy. Any deficiency in the constitution should later be amended by the same Egyptian people.

On the other side, if the constitution will be rejected it will also mean that the Egyptian people are exercising their right to decide their fate. They will continue their struggle for a better constitution, government, economic order and society.

With all the harsh words and violent eruptions of the last period in Egypt, I would suggest that we all take some historic perspective by comparing Egypt’s revolution to its predecessors like France 1789-99, Russia 1917 and Iran 1979. Two years on into these revolutions there was a bloody struggle that will make our Egyptian conflict look like a friendly conversation.

Still we can hope much more from our leaderships than avoiding killing each other. There is a lot of work to do to achieve the goals of the revolution. There is no way to do it without constructive discussion and cooperation.

As the Israeli war planes are throwing their American Bombs on Gaza, killing babies in their cradles, children in their playing yards, women and men of all ages wherever they might be – this is not the time to talk on Gaza… It is the time to act to stop this criminal assault.

This is a war that was started by two wicked devils, Netanyahu and Barak. As the bombs started to fall, all the Zionist leaders, from all parties, came running to congratulate their great leaders on opening this war, like a pack of wolves gathering on the stench of blood. Once again they prove, to anyone that still requires such a proof, that not only there is no left or conscientious Zionist, there is also no reasonable one.

The leaders of Zionist Apartheid decided to ignite the fire of war and flood Gaza with blood and destruction knowing that the progress of Arab Spring will make it harder for them to act in the future. Now Syria is locked in a deadly civil war and in Jordan the army and the king are still holding the line against the mass movement. They hope that Egypt is so stuck in economic trouble that it will not dare to anger the Americans by acting to save Gaza.

I thought that Netanyahu and Barak started the war on Gaza because of their frustration at not being allowed to attack Iran. But, as I read the Israeli papers, I learn that there is another option: That the war on Gaza is a general rehearsal to test the Arab and the World’s response… If they get off with this aggression and don’t pay the price, they are more likely to try for the big one and throw the whole region into a bloody global conflict.

We can stop them. The Arab spring brought to the center of the stage the sleeping giant – the Arab public. It is for the first time that the ability of the Arab masses to act and change in this new period is put to the test of a regional crisis…

If we hear today that the Hamas government in Gaza is calling for the Egyptians and the Arab League to finally lift the blockade of Gaza and open the border fully for people and merchandise, we learn that the wakeup call is overdue. How come that there is an elected Egyptian government and the blockade is still there? Is it the old regime that is still calling the shots in Cairo or is it an American dictate? It is time for the brave Egyptian people to put their house in order.

There is a lot that can be done on the Arab front. The whole position from Israel should be changed. It is not only the peace agreements of Egypt and Jordan that keeps the Israeli back while they kill the Palestinians. It is also the “Arab Peace Initiative”, adopted by the Arab League, which gives legitimacy to ethnic cleansing and tries to appease Israel instead of fighting to end Apartheid.

But the really effective pressure to stop this crazy war is probably the pressure on the United States and European countries that still support the aggression, militarily, politically and diplomatically. The imperialist powers gain hundreds of billions of dollars out of their hegemony over Arab oil, Arab markets, Arab financial assets and much more. They keep throwing some of these gains at Israel to keep its military machine working and greased with Arab blood. Only when the imperialist powers will know that by supporting Israeli aggression they will pay a high price in their interests all over the region they will make this bloody war stop.

It is not time to talk on Gaza – we should and we can act to stop the war!